Monthly Archives: December 2015

Sea History 157 is in the mail and on the newsstands. Just look at what’s in this issue:

Cutterman Frank Newcomb and the Rescue of USS Winslow, by William H. Thiesen
When the United States declared war on Spain in the spring of 1898, US Revenue Cutter Service Lt. Frank Newcomb, in command of USRC Hudson out of New York, was sent to patrol the north coast of Cuba. Not long after their arrival, Newcomb and his crew led a daring rescue of a disabled US Navy torpedo boat, under attack during the Battle of Cárdenas.

Lieutenant Charles Hunter, USN, and the Blanche Affair, by Evelyn M. Cherpak
In the days before wireless communications, naval captains had to use their best judgment to assess a potential enemy at sea without the benefit of verifying their planned course of action with their superiors. In the Civil War, US Navy lieutenant Charles Hunter considered it within his authority to stop ships at sea and seize them. The ramifications were deemed controversial and demonstrate the difficult gray area lesser commanders had to navigate.

Welcome to the New Land, Draken Harald Hårfagre, by Ingeborg Louise “Vesla” Adie
In 2016, the largest Viking ship built in modern times sailed to North America and toured the Great Lakes and the northeast, inspiring Norwegian-Americans to learn more about their proud Viking heritage and share it with the world.
Find this article in Featured Articles from Sea History.

The Rivers: A Celebration of Life and Work on America’s Waterways, by Daven Anderson
Each year, more than 500 million tons of freight flow past American cities and towns along our inland waterways, mostly out of the public eye. Artist Daven Anderson’s latest exhibition looks at the working craft and culture on our inland rivers, in all their grit and beauty.Online exclusive: see more of Daven Anderson’s works here.

Funding for America’s Maritime Heritage: Rounding the Bases, by Timothy J. Runyan
While funding established by the Maritime Heritage Act of 1994 was reinstated a few years ago, the full amount promised has yet to be made available. National Maritime Alliance Chair, Dr. Timothy Runyan, has kept the pressure on Congress to restore full funding to the grants program, and he can’t do it alone. In this update, Dr. Runyan explains how we can help.
Update:

The Barque Picton Castle Bosun School: Learning the Traditional Skills of the Sailing Ship Seafarer, by Captain Daniel D. MorelandWhile the Age of Sail in its true form has long passed and, with it, the everyday knowledge and skills of the mariner and rigger, there is still one place where one can go to learn the ways of a ship from a master, without committing to a long term at sea.

Plus, you’ll find the regular features you look forward to in every issue:

We reported on the excursion steamer Columbia one year ago in Sea History 149 (Winter 2014–15). Believed to be the oldest intact remaining passenger steamer in the country, the veteran of nearly 90 years of ferrying passengers back and forth to Bob-Lo Island had been towed to the Toledo, Ohio, Ironhead Marine for initial cleanup and repairs before making the journey to Buffalo, NY, where work continues.

We have made tremendous progress in the past year. Columbia has undergone a $1.6 million hull restoration. The boat has traveled over 250 nautical miles, glided across three rivers—Detroit, Maumee, and Buffalo—and crossed Lake Erie. She has passed the shorelines of three states—Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—before landing for the first time in New York State.

It was a memorable experience to watch. A flotilla led by the fireboat Edward M. Cotter, the tall ship Spirit of Buffalo, and private vessels, from sailboats to kayaks, greeted our steamboat as she came into Buffalo Harbor. Columbia is now docked in the Buffalo River at Silo City, where our crew has prepared her for winter.

Columbia was built in 1902 by the Detroit Dry Dock Company in Wyandotte, Michigan. Her designer was the well-known naval architect Frank Kirby, working with artist and architect Louis O. Keil. She carried passengers from Detroit to the amusement park on Boblo Island. The 80-minute cruise was an attraction in its own right; Columbia had a full-sized ballroom and bands played popular music to entertain the crowds. Columbia and her “little sister,” Ste. Claire, the “Boblo boats,” served the island until 1991, just two years before the amusement park closed altogether.

The Boblo boats were declared national Historic Landmark Vessels in 1992; unfortunately, campaigns to restore them and find new homes for them weren’t able to secure the funding necessary for the undertaking. New York preservationist Richard Anderson formulated a plan to bring Columbia to the Hudson River, which had its own heyday of steam ferries, to serve as a cultural flagship reconnecting New York City to the waterfront cities and towns along the scenic Hudson Valley. Mr. Anderson passed away in 2013, but SS Columbia Project is continuing his work to make Columbia‘s new mission a reality.

In February of 2013, Rear Admiral Robert Lunney presented a talk for the NMHS Charles Point Council seminar series, The Hungnam Evacuation and the Ship of Miracles in the Korean War. RADM Lunney, a longtime friend of NMHS and former president of the NY chapter of the US Navy League, told us about his experience aboard SS Meredith Victory with the extraordinary rescue of 14,000 Korean men, women, and children in December 1950.

Do you think you’ve got the Viking spirit? Expedition America 2016 is looking for a few good men and women to crew aboard Draken Harald Hårfagre (Dragon Harald Fairhair), the largest viking ship built in modern times. The ship will leave her home port in Haugesund, Norway, in May 2016 to voyage across the North Atlantic Ocean. The journey will recreate the first transatlantic crossing, and the Viking discovery of the New World, more than a thousand years ago. The project will, like Leif Eriksson, create cross-border meetings and inspire people to go beyond the horizon in a modern Viking saga. Along the route, the ship will touch on Iceland and Greenland, and then to the US and Canada, passing Viking settlements and new archaeological findings.

While Draken Harald Hårfagre is not a replica, she was constructed based on knowledge of traditional Viking boatbuilding, descriptions in Old Norse literature and foreign contemporary sources , visual representations of Viking ships, old sailing records, and the example of the construction of the Gokstad ship. Construction began in 2010. Launched in 2012, the ship sailed in the waters along the Norwegian coast, making her first ocean voyage from Haugesund, Norway, to Liverpool, UK, and back.

Expedition 2016 is looking for volunteers to crew the ship for at least a two-month leg of the journey. It’s not an undertaking for the faint of heart or delicate of hairstyle; the ship’s design is open-deck, with just a tent for shelter. But the stories to take home will last a lifetime for a lucky few.

Sea History 153 is in the mail and on the newsstands. Just look at what’s in this issue:

National History Day—Prizes in Maritime HistoryMeet the winners of this year’s NMHS maritime history competition, part of the National History Day program. More than half a million middle and high school students take part in the NHD research-project competition.

Cutterman Hugh George Campbell: Master and Commander of Super-Cutter Eagle and Forgotten Hero of the Quasi War, by William H. Thiesen
Hugh Campbell served his country in four naval wars as a patriot, cutterman, combat captain, and senior naval officer. In a two-year campaign in the West Indies during the Quasi War, Campbell and his crew captured twenty-two privateers, prize ships, and enemy merchantmen, while destroying a number of others. All this was achieved without losing a single member of his crew.

A New Look at the “Longitude Problem,” by Daniel McFadden
The exhibition Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude, produced by the National Maritime Museum in London, takes into consideration the many angles and players who were working on solving the great challenge of their time. For a limited time, the exhibition is on display at Mystic Seaport, offering the chance to see Harrison’s famous sea clocks up close.

Trade vs. Diplomacy: The Problem of the Free Port Marstrand During the American Revolution, by Rikard DrakenlordhDuring the War for Independence, American shipowners sought to establish trading partners around the world, both for economic interests and to supply the fighting forces at home with much-needed supplies. Great Britain tried to quash this attempt. Caught in the middle were neutral nations trying to establish free ports.

Maritime Archaeology in the 21st Century, by James P. Delgado
Advances in technology, awareness, and education, and a shift in how both academia and the diving community view shipwrecks, have driven the field of maritime archaeology into a new era. James Delgado, director of NOAA’s Maritime Heritage Program, traces the evolution of the field from its beginnings to how maritime archaeology is practiced today.
Find this article in Featured Articles from Sea History

Sailors in Distress: The Origins of the First Federal Healthcare Legislation, by Harold D. Langley

Wellcome Library, London. http://wellcomeimages.org

One of the first orders of business for the First Federal Congress when it met in 1789 was to address who would pay for the care of stranded American seamen in foreign ports and sick and disabled seamen who arrived in American ports with no one to take them in.

This issue’s cover is Eagle and Constitution on Convoy Duty, April 1799, digital painting by Peter Rindlisbacher.

Plus, you’ll find the regular features you look forward to in every issue:

The government of Colombia has announced that it has located the remains of the Spanish galleon San Jose, lost in a battle against the British ship Expedition, in the War of Spanish Succession, 307 years ago. The wreck, located not far from Cartagena, is believed to be carrying a cargo including gold, silver and emeralds, with a value estimated to be in the billions.

The wreck is reported to be in a location different from that of a site previously believed to be the San Jose, a site which inspired lawsuits between the Colombian government and the American salvage company Sea Search Armada over the ownership and disposition of items to be recovered.

Thanks to generous sponsor support, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum will be offering free admission Monday through Friday during the month of February. Free admission covers access to the entire museum, including the working boatyard and 1879 Hooper Strait Lighthouse, as well as numerous permanent and changing exhibitions along CBMM’s waterfront campus in historic St. Michaels, MD.

The Free in February program includes President’s Day, and is made possible through the generous sponsor support of the Talbot Bank and Awful Arthur’s of St. Michaels, MD. Guests will also receive a voucher for a 15% discount off of a meal at Awful Arthur’s on the day of the museum visit.

“Winter offers a great time to explore our 12 exhibition buildings and beautiful campus, especially while enjoying the town’s great restaurants, shops, hotels and inns,” said CBMM’s President Kristen Greenaway. “We have a great number of inside exhibitions for all ages to enjoy, the waterfowl are abundant along a quieter harbor and the Miles River, and you can see great things happening in our boatyard as education programs and the restoration of our historic fleet of Chesapeake vessels ramp up in the colder months.”

Guests can also take in the exhibition A Broad Reach: 50 Years of Collecting, which features 50 significant objects that have been accessioned into the museum’s collection over the past 50 years, presented on both floors of the Steamboat Building. The exhibition will be closing to the public in 2016.

Admission will be free weekdays in February for all museum guests. General admission is otherwise good for two consecutive days and is $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and students with ID, $6 for children 6-17, and free for museum members and children five and under. The museum is open 10 AM to 4 PM seven days a week, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

Designed by William Francis Gibbs and built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, SS United States was subsidized by the US government with the understanding that she would be repurposed for troop transport should the need ever arise. Strict US Navy standards were observed, including compartmentalization to combat flooding and dual engine rooms for redundancy in case one of them was rendered inoperable. Designer Gibbs also went to great lengths to prevent the threat of fire; no wood was permitted in any of the public rooms, with the famous exception of the grand pianos and the catering crew’s butcher blocks.

United States undertook her maiden voyage on 3 July 1952 from New York to Le Havre and Southampton, and on that voyage set a record for the eastbound crossing by a liner, earning the ship the historic Blue Riband for her achievement. The ship enjoyed a decade of prestige, hosting statesmen and celebrities on the Atlantic. The 1960s saw a decline in ocean travel, and in 1969 she was removed from service. She changed hands multiple times since retirement, and has been berthed in Philadelphia since 1996. The SSUSC purchased the United States in 2010, and has been looking for partners to develop the ship as a multipurpose venue. This new announcement might signal the first step in a new incarnation for the historic liner.

Plimoth Plantation’sMayflower II, a 57-year-old replica of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to this continent, arrived in Mystic, CT, on Sunday, 14 December. Once the ship is settled in, Paul Haley of Capt. G.W. Full & Associates will be carrying out a full marine survey to evaluate her condition; the ballast material will be removed completely for the first time since the vessel’s launch in order to get a good look at the bilge area. Once the full extent of Mayflower II‘s refit needs have been evaluated, the first stage of work will begin, at the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard at Mystic Seaport. In the spring, she will return to Plimoth Plantation, returning to Mystic for further work at the end of the 2015 season. Plimoth hopes to have all of the work completed in time for the 2020 anniversary of the original Mayflower‘s journey to North America.

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has announced that it will be closing two exhibits: Push and Pull: Life on Chesapeake Bay Tugboats and Navigating Freedom: The War of 1812 on the Chesapeake. Both floors of the Steamboat Building, which currently houses these exhibits, will be used for the upcoming exhibition A Broad Reach: 50 Years of Collecting, commemorating the museum’s 50th anniversary. The exhibition will have a private opening on 22 May, the date of the museum’s founding in 1965, and then open to the public on 23 May.